Avocado’s Cyber Maturity Assessment Model, Avocado Consulting - deliver with certainty

Building real-world resilience for modern organisations

Avocado’s Cyber Security Self-Assessment is an online tool to help you understand your baseline maturity. It is underpinned by our Cyber Maturity Self-Assessment Model, which is built on decades of hands-on delivery, security uplift, and governance experience across Australia’s most regulated industries. It brings together the fundamentals of good security with the organisational, operational, and emerging attack-vector risks organisations are facing today.

The result is a practical, future-ready maturity baseline that helps determine which frameworks and uplift to prioritise — without forcing one-size-fits-all controls. By combining essential controls with today’s organisational and emerging risks, the model ensures uplift is aligned to real business risk, not theoretical compliance.

Our 12 Cyber Resilience Domains

An assessment model built for modern threats

Our maturity assessment model assesses maturity across twelve critical domains that together determine your organisation’s ability to prevent, detect, respond to, and recover from cyber incidents. Aligned to Essential Eight and other industry frameworks, our assessment focuses on risk prioritisation, not checkbox compliance. This approach reflects the realities of today’s digital environments and the pressures facing IT, security, and executive teams. It gives you clarity, confidence, and a path to strengthened resilience.

Application Control

Ensures only approved and trusted applications can run across your environment, reducing the risk of malicious or unauthorised software execution.

Patch Applications

Addresses known vulnerabilities by ensuring all applications receive timely and consistent security updates.

Restrict Microsoft Macros

Reduces exposure to malicious scripts by blocking or limiting macros from untrusted sources.

User Application Hardening

Minimises attack surface by disabling unnecessary features, plugins and risky behaviours in commonly used applications.

Restrict Administrative Privileges

Controls and limits elevated access to reduce the risk of privilege misuse and compromised credentials.

Patch Operating Systems

Maintains system integrity by keeping operating systems updated with essential security patches.

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

Strengthens identity assurance by requiring additional verification beyond passwords.

Data Security

Examines how effectively sensitive data is classified, protected, and monitored across its lifecycle – including storage, use, transmission, encryption, access control, and secure disposal.

Regular Backups

Ensures rapid recovery and data resilience through secure, consistent, and tested backup practices.

Cyber Security Policy & Governance

Provides clarity, accountability, and alignment by embedding security into organisational oversight and decision-making.

Risk Assessments

Identifies, evaluates, and prioritises cyber risks to drive informed, actionable remediation.

Third-Party Risk

Assesses the security posture of suppliers and partners to reduce exposure across your digital supply chain.

Our 4 Cyber Resilience Maturity Levels

Avocado’s model classifies organisations into one of four maturity levels, providing a clear picture of where you are today — and what improvement looks like. To get started on assessing your maturity, complete our short assessment.

Starting Out

Your organisation is in the initial stages of establishing Cyber Security controls. There is a higher likelihood of successful cyberattacks due to missing, weak or inconsistent controls. Foundational controls are inconsistent or incomplete, and security tends to be reactive. Visibility is limited, governance is emerging, and gaps exist across patching, access, resilience, and emerging risk management. The organisation is vulnerable to common threats and requires uplift across the core domains.

Developing

Your organisation has made some progress in establishing Cyber Security controls, but significant gaps remain. There is a moderate likelihood of successful cyberattacks due to missing, weak or inconsistent controls. Security practices are more structured, controls are implemented with growing consistency, and governance frameworks are taking shape. Risk assessments are becoming regular, and the organisation is actively addressing gaps, though maturity varies across hardening, privileged access, supply chain risk, and emerging data exposures.

Maturing

Your organisation has established many core Cyber Security controls and is working toward consistently implementing and optimising them across the organisation. There is a somewhat reduced likelihood of successful cyberattacks, though some gaps or inconsistencies are likely to still exist in certain areas. Many core Cyber Security controls are established, and work is being carried out towards consistently implementing and optimising them across the organisation. There is a somewhat reduced likelihood of successful cyberattacks, though some gaps or inconsistencies are likely to still exist in certain areas

Advanced

Your company has made significant progress in establishing Cyber Security controls. There is a low likelihood of successful cyberattacks due to missing, weak or inconsistent controls. Security is embedded into organisational operations and aligned to business priorities. Controls are consistently implemented, governance is strong, risk processes are proactive, and there is clear visibility across the environment. The organisation is resilient, responsive, and well-equipped to manage both current and emerging cyber threats.

How Avocado Helps You Improve

We won’t recommend unnecessary controls – only what meaningfully strengthens your resilience.

Practical guidance backed by real delivery experience - We translate findings into actionable steps you can take immediately, not theoretical recommendations that sit on a shelf.

Prioritised improvements aligned to risk -
We help you understand what to fix first, what will deliver the biggest impact, and how to balance security uplift with operational needs.

Tailored to your industry, risk appetite, and organisational size
Every organisation faces different threats, operates under different regulatory pressures, and tolerates different levels of risk. Our approach is never one-size-fits-all.

We don’t start with a framework — we start with your current maturity.
We assess your business size and complexity, industry and regulatory pressures, operating model and data sensitivity and business impact. Frameworks are then right sized to validate and prioritise the right uplift.

We meet organisations where they are. Instead of defaulting to an ISMS framework such as ISO 27001, we recommend what actually fits your organisation: We consider your risk appetite, ensuring recommendations match your operational realities and business goals.

The goal isn’t surface-level compliance. The goal is meaningful risk reduction. Our output isn’t a technical report – it’s a risk prioritisation profile that maps fit-for-purpose frameworks, (e.g. E8, SMB1001, ISO where justified).We avoid over-engineering policies, procedures and controls that add cost without reducing risk

Services to support your entire uplift journey

Whether you’re laying foundational controls or strengthening advanced capabilities, Avocado provides:

Cyber Governance and Policy uplift
Security Framework implementation
Security Risk assessments
Security Architecture and Engineering
Cloud Security assessments (M365, Azure, AWS, Google Workspace, GCP)
Identity and Access Management

Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Planning
Application Security
Penetration Testing
Privacy Advisory
Technical delivery and implementation support
Continuous monitoring and resilience improvements
Ongoing advisory and security partnership

Frequently asked questions

Isn't this just another cyber checklist?

No. Checklists show whether a control exists. This assessment helps you understand whether your current approach is sufficient for your organisation’s size, sector, and operating model — and what to prioritise next.

We’ve already completed Essential Eight. Why do this?

That’s a strong foundation. Essential Eight is the government-recommended baseline. Our assessment and walkthrough confirm whether that baseline is sufficient for your current risk profile and identify any targeted uplift that would materially reduce exposure.

Don't wait until an incident occurs. Uplift your security today with a clear, pragmatic roadmap.

To get started, Take our Cyber Maturity Self-Assessment